Volunteer Opportunities

REACH Home 2018/19 opened in mid-November. We are pleased to once again be partnering with Dimitri House, Inc. to provide winter temporary transitional housing for homeless men and women at 102 N. Union Street.

As in the past three years we will need volunteers from the community in the following areas:

Set up and preparation – there is a lot to be done to the building. We need people who can paint, move furniture, clean, and do general handyperson work. Please call John Curran at 585-271-1053 (leave a message).

Building rehabbing, plumbing, and construction – if you have skills in these or related areas we need your help. Please call Deacon Dan at 585-233-1755.

Meals – we provide a cooked meal each evening and are looking for volunteers to meet this need. Volunteers are expected to provide a meal for about 30+ people. Please bring the food to the REACH Home before 5:30 p.m. each evening. Volunteers may enter the kitchen at the rear of the house. We hope that meal volunteers will stay and serve the meal and greet our guests. To sign up to serve a meal please click here.

Drivers – we need people who are willing to drive our guests to their appointments, such as medical appointments or drug treatment appointments. To sign up as a driver please click here.

Shift Volunteer – to help us control our costs we welcome volunteers who would be willing to do a four-hour shift at the Home. We will provide appropriate training for this kind of volunteer work. Such volunteers will be an invaluable source of building relationships and a supporting community for our guests. To sign up as a shift volunteer please click here.

Volunteers: When working, or dropping off donations, at REACH Home please be aware of the parking restrictions at the site.

Meet Some Of Our Most Recent Volunteers

2018-19 Winter REACH Home

Meal Volunteers

The Youth Group from St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hilton and Webster Thomas National Honor Society students were among the many families and groups providing dinner for our residents this winter.

McQuaid Jesuit High School

On October 30, 2018, twenty freshmen from McQuaid Jesuit High School and their two adult supervisors performed a variety of tasks to prepare REACH home for its opening in mid-November. This is McQuaid’s third consecutive year of helping REACH.

Naval ROTC building preparation volunteers

Site Preparation for a possible Tiny Home Community

In 2018 a site on St. Paul Street was identified as a possible location for a community of tiny homes that might provide shelter, services, and support for a population of the currently homeless. Above is a 2016 satellite photo of the site. Debris from earlier demolition is evident; more still remains as of Nov. 2018. The large tree was cut down and its ground-up trunk produced the mulch used for a work day on October 20. The rear parking area is barely visible above, hidden by fallen tree limbs and wild vegetation.

In late August twenty-five incoming freshmen from The College at Brockport (yellow t-shirts) filled two dumpsters with tree branch debris as part of their Saturday of Service. Two days later a similar number of incoming freshmen from the University of Rochester (blue t-shirts) removed debris piles, dug up old fence posts, trimmed trees, cleared vegetation and swept pavement surfaces on their Wilson Day. Together these efforts help the visualization of three 160-foot depth land parcels joining as one for a proposed tiny home village on St. Paul Street to aid affordable housing.

In mid-September Natalie and Lucinda from the UR Grassroots Environmentalists worked for about two hours to remove invasive vegetation at the southwest corner of the St. Paul property. The bare soil will be covered with cardboard and then a layer of mulch during the upcoming Saturday afternoon, October 6th River Romance event entitled “River R.A.F.T. (Restoring A Forgotten Terrain)”. This technique blocks photosynthesis for the roots and vine systems that still remain in the soil after the vegetation was dug out.

On October 20 a team of volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints undertook two major tasks at the site: removing surface debris left by a previous demolition of a residence, and covering bare weed-eradicated soil with cardboard and mulch to prevent wild vegetation re-growth and promote a new lawn. In addition to the slideshow below there is a short video, prepared by the LDS group, which can be viewed here.

We need your help

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